Radical Faces
by Symmet
Summary: AU stories inspired by songs.
1. Mountains

_**"Mountains"**_  
_Radical Face_

lyrics used belong to the song Mountains by Radical Face, no copy right infringement intended, ever.

* * *

_I was just a boy_

Sam huffed out a sigh, rubbing the cloth between his fingers, worn and warming through the receptive friction. But he couldn't stop. It filled something up inside him, an almost ache, an almost joy, something great and lonely. The blue was surreal, the kind of blue you only see in dreams, it seemed to glow, to come off as dust fragments in the air.

Or he was tired.

It was probably because he was tired. He hadn't slept in...what? Three days? Four?

Sam couldn't remember. He glanced out of the window at the dark warehouse, how long had it been?

Shouldn't Dean have been back by now?

_My father seemed a mountain then_

They'd returned to Dad's storage, eventually. They'd wanted to see if there really was anything useful for this... this "war", or if the only leverage they had was their status as vessels. They had spent many nights debating it with Bobby, back and forth about if it was being watched by angels or not, and Cas wasn't around, still on his search for his father, so they'd had to figure it out by themselves.

Eventually they'd decided the angels wouldn't think they were stupid enough to go back.

Hopefully that was the case.

_With a voice that could shake the seas_

Sam was just about to throw the fabric down in favor of backing up his missing brother, but already, in the dark outside the window, a figure was approaching, familiar, and hunched against the light wind and rain. Before, about an hour ago, Dean had found and grabbed the blanket, had brought it back and tossed it at Sam through the window. He'd done so indifferently, although Sam knew it mattered, knew that something inside Dean was impossibly relieved when Sam recognized it, held it up in disbelief. Dean had retreated again, on the search for something actually helpful, not a surprise memento, not nostalgia soft and warm and faded blues.

_My mother's ghost hung across his shoulders_

Dean got in, put a box in the back seat, shrugged off Sam's inquiries about the usefulness of the venture, and started the car. He was silent, but not in the disappointed way, although it was obvious there wasn't anything particularly amazing, but in a way that leveled quiet shock and an almost loneliness, and Sam knew better to pry, was already trying to guess at what it was.

It wasn't hard.

It was about Dad. Something in there had surprised Dean, but not enough for him to mention it to Sam.

Sam looked at the child's blanket in his lap, the one corner tarnished black and plastic by raging heat.

By fire.

_And he said she was still watching over me_

Sam was just tired enough, and the blanket was just forgotten enough, just important enough, that it was like a curveball on his mind. It had brought back memories he didn't know he'd had, soft ones, gentle ones. Old ones.

Ones that could be dreams he'd imagined as a child to fill the absence of a mother.

His thumb worried the silken side again as he contemplated it.

The stitches that had been pressed in to spell an imperfect rendition of his name.

It made something old and sad awaken in him, and the rain pelted down and the silence bore into their bones because Dean was too out of it to turn on the radio.

* * *

_My brother was home_

Meeting Lucifer had been painful and messed up and wrong. So wrong.

And he'd been alone, and that had been why Lucifer had come, because he and Dean weren't talking.

And Sam was far away and his name was Kent or Clark or oh, Keith.

It had been Keith.

And Lucifer had wanted to take advantage of it and it made Sam so upset.

Something inside him raged almost quietly, but it churned like boiling water when he thought about it, refused to acknowledge it.

Refused to look at the blue memory wrapped softly in his bag.

But now he and Dean were back together.

Right?

_Just returned on army leave_

And he tried not to think about Lucifer, tried so hard. But when the silence was deafening, when he sat on the edge of his bed and it was eleven at night and Dean was taking a shower because they were all filled up on aches and sores and cuts and wounds, the emotions wiggled in, between the fingers pressed to his temple, cupping his face.

And Dean was trying, trying so hard, to trust him, and he knew he'd need to tell Dean at some point but how could he find the words?

How could he tell Dean when he couldn't even begin to admit it to himself?

_Told his stories with a distant stare_

And so Sam turned to Castiel, obsessed with his hunt, the God he could not find, would not find, and tried to find the words in an angel that was finding himself more lost than the brothers.

So Sam found no words, and the blanket lay wedged in his pack, stowed away just enough that he wouldn't resent it enough to toss it, but just far away enough that it was still a quiet douse of shock when he was searching for his knife or cards or an obscure booklet on witch charms. That it froze him and churned like sour laughter in his stomach.

And he would promise himself anew he'd get rid of it, but he'd always forget.

_And as it snowed_

It happened on a highway. An empty highway, in terms of life.

An erased highway, in terms of hail.

Dean was glaring at the windshield, or through it perhaps, because he'd never glare at his baby, at the ice attempting to encase them, ricocheting off the top in a very unreassuring manner.

And they would be stuck there for hours, and Sam could feel the silence pressing in, the thoughts he didn't want to think, because the radio couldn't connect through the storm.

And so, in an attempt to offset the quiet that pursued him, he'd dug through his bag for a pack of playing cards.

And his hand met soft sweet silk, blue unlike the sky or sea and rich and light all at once.

_The wind was howling through the trees_

"Lucifer visited me in my dreams."

The preamble that he'd rehearsed - or had attempted to rehearse - did not arrive, stuck behind them in the miles of snow, and so the words he'd held in since reuniting, since that terrible nightmare where devil dressed as Jess was remembered, spilled out black across the white that encased them.

Dean was furious at first, as he had the right to be.

But Sam had suddenly found it, the memory locked away too tight in a child's thoughts, the one that was sad and aching and he'd thought had been of his mother but how wrong.

How wrong he had been, and so it had been terrible when Lucifer revealed himself.

If only because deep down Sam already knew him.

_And I spent my night just listening by the fire_

And Dean doesn't believe him at first, refuses, because there is a hurt at those words that he could have failed, failed so irrevocably, in his care-taking of Sam, that the devil had sang lullabies to his brother and he'd never known.

And Sam had never known.

And he's beginning to think that not even Lucifer knows.

And he's trying to remember it all at once, all these things he hasn't known but knows irrevocably, obviously, completely and utterly.

And Dean is holding the blue between his hands, and the ice is cold and he feels colder still, because their father had saved things from the fire that night.

That night when they had fled, Dean does not remember anything surviving but the clothes off their back and the impala, and yet there had been an entire box of things from home, some broken or melted or scarred by ash in places, but memories nonetheless.

And the blue blanket, so beloved by one Samuel Winchester, had survived, albeit with the crusted corner of fire too close.

And etched into it in steady but wary cursive was_ Samuel_.

* * *

_My hands move the creases from my brow_

When they get to a hotel, finally, finally, the silence is unshakable. There are no words from Dean, a revelation that he hates, but he has promised to trust Sam and so he will try, against every agony in his being.

And The silence is greater and more terrible than all the times before it, and yet Sam is filled with relief, as if the silence had heralded the return of distant memory, and so now, now that he knew that truth that had reemerged, from deep and long ago, the silence was content.

The silence sang him to sleep in place of a person, almost as golden, almost as sweet.

_Soft as a breath_

And when John Winchester had been gone and would be gone for many nights, and they were not at Bobby's, and Dean was asleep, it happened.

Sometimes, Sam, small and afraid, although he knew not then why, would wake in the middle of the night.

And lay there, heart beating, a hummingbird trapped under his ribcage, tiny and small and innocent.

And it would come.

He could never see it.

Not at first.

But something gentle would caress him, would stroke him back to sleep.

_It's like a feather_

He caught sight of it once, from the corner of his eye.

Two years had passed since the first encounter, it had been silent all this time, never spoke a word, and for the longest time, Sam hadn't dared speak, either.

But finally his curiosity came, as it would, always would, and he dared to ask.

And the petting paused, and as it departed, he saw the barest flutter of a feather, a wing, flash by his nightstand.

And he mourned it's absence and fell asleep in tears.

_I dreamed of a lonely voice that night_

And that night it sang to him.

On the barest edges of his dream, it stayed, always just out of reach, out of sight, always just close enough that he could nearly feel it, it was achingly nearly enough.

And it sang, that haunting way that angels should sing, though he had no words for what it was then.

And for months, all it did was sing away the nightmares, and leave him to ache in the fields of whatever dream held him,

and leave him come morning, to memories that would fade as quicksilver as he woke.

_Quiet as death_

And then, one night, before he went to bed, he prayed.

The first night he prayed, and indeed, the beginning of much of the rest of his life - until he and his brother discovered angels were not so pure in plots or plans.

And that night, he prayed, though it was for his brother and father, away on a hunt he was not supposed to know about.

And he sat for many minutes before lying down to sleep, staring at the moon as if to dare it contradict him.

And when he fell asleep, the dream was silent.

And when he woke, his remembered just long enough that something was wrong before he heard Dean open the door and he sprang from his bed in delight and the dream trickled away as the night did on sun-tipped sails.

_Outside my window_

And then, finally, after a month of silent dreams, something inside him remembered the almost friend, and he prayed for their return.

And he prayed for their safety, just as he did for Dean and his father and Bobby and the pastor.

And that night, when he fell asleep, it was not silent, but great, soft tears billowed through his dreams, the shadow of that almost friend farther now, and cast him on stormy waves, and so he cried for his friend, and did not know what hurt it so, and called out to nothingness.

And when he woke up, he remembered the dream, and felt something worried deep inside.

And the next night, he did not pray. He lay, worrying over it again and again, and by the time he fell asleep he had forgotten.

_It sang a sad and lovely tune_

And it spoke to him then.

Softly, at first, and it had to stop because he began to cry, and the dream languished in his tears, and though this invisible friend would not let itself be seen, it gently hugged him from behind, and waited until he had stopped.

And it cried, too, but less than last time, and it told him gently that it had to go away, because he prayed and it could not stay.

And he begged it, he begged it not to go, promised to never pray again.

And it laughed quietly as it cried, and something inside Sam was great and sad and aching at that.

And it said it loved him, and to never stop praying, to redeem them both, and then it said goodbye.

_Clear as a bell_

For a year it did not return, and Sam did not dream.

And every night he prayed for their redemption.

And every night, he pulled blue cloth close round his body, as if to squeeze out the ache and remember the softness of unseen fingers carding through his hair and soft sweet song echoing through his dreams.

And so it came that one day, Sam was told in class - for he had started school just recently - that his brother was in the hospital and he would have to walk home.

and that night, alone and terrified, he did not pray, could not pray, for he'd done so every night and always for his brother, and always for his father, and always for his friend.

And if Dean died Sam did not know what he would do.

_Soft as a shiver_

It came, that night, to soothe him. To hold him close and let their tears meld silver lakes through the dream, and sing to him and apologize for leaving him alone and promise him the world.

_Anything, anything_, it would promise, _anything so that you will not cry._

And Sam knew it could not heal Dean, but he asked for that anyways.

But he could not stop crying, asking why it would leave him

did it not like him anymore?

And there the dream dissolved - for it began to weep and break and ache so much that the dream fell apart, and Sam felt it dissipate through his fingers, it apologizing over and over again.

_It said, I want you all the time_

_It said, I want you all the time_

And it never came again.

* * *

_Goodbye bad thoughts_

Sam had waited about another week before Lucifer reappeared.

He was surprised, honestly.

And he sat on the edge of this dreamscape bed, identical to the one in the hotel, and held a small blue blanket between his hands, not daring to look up.

Afraid, terrified, that he was wrong, yes, but so much more afraid that he was right.

Because what would it mean?

What would happen?

"Sam?"

And that voice was lilting, but it wasn't the voice of his friend, but his friend had not had a corporeal form.

And Sam didn't know, didn't know anything.

But in that moment, when he looked up and met Lucifer's wary, calculating gaze, the fear fell away.

A cool rage, calamity and calm, sudden hummed in him.

"Do you remember, Lucifer?"

_I'm safe under covers_

Lucifer didn't remember.

But something inside him must have, something soft and pained and aching sparked.

Sam just let the emotions out, free to drag him down or release him, and indeed, they were confused and they did both.

"Sam, I don't think -"

But it has been too long, and Sam knows already that pain does not fade with time, it festers, ripens quietly.

And so he remembers freshly the abandonment, and does not condone it, and aches anew.

It comes out hoarsely, just petulant enough as would a child.

"You promised me anything."

_So goodbye bad thoughts_

When Lucifer remembers, it is painful for them both.

Whatever tiny bits of Lucifer's Grace he could stuff through the bars of the cage had had to be enough to prepare demons for the coming apocalypse.

Somehow, some way, one had found itself at Sam's bedside.

And began a love that could not be undone, and began a pain more great and terrible and lonely and aching than either could take.

So they had forgotten, as was safer, as was kinder to them both.

"_Sam_." And it's said anew, as if recognizing an old friend, an old love.

An old ache.

_'Cause I'm safe under covers_

"Please." Sam begged Lucifer, for what they both hoped would be last and final time.

Such agony was clogging up these old wounds, and Sam was small again, in this dream he could not help it, because if Lucifer refused then he would still fight with every bone in his body, but for now, for just this moment he could take comfort in being held close and safe and warm and this, this ache and joy all as one as he could only feel in Lucifer's arms.

"_Sam_." Lucifer whispered reverently to Sam's head, pressed into his collar as would every child who seeks to find safety, tiny hands wrapped around his neck as they never had before, knowing now not to let go, unwilling to ever lose him again.

And perhaps he feels the same.

"Lucifer, please." And these tears are hot and fresh, and they burrow into Lucifer's borrowed skin just as easily in dream as they would in flesh.

_Now I can see you again_

"_Anything_," The angel whispers.


	2. All is Well (Goodbye, Goodbye)

Lyrics used belong to the song, **_All is Well (Goodbye, Goodbye)_** by Radical Face, no copyright infringement intended.

* * *

_It's hard to keep the rainclouds out_  
_When the windows never close_  
_The house feels like a graveyard now_  
_Like the floorboards hide the bones_

Sam rarely went to visit Bobby after Dean died. When he did, it was short, but never sweet, bitter in that sad way that pain and rage collide, melded together by a gap, a missing piece. And after he had collected what he had needed - _**never**, he never got what he needed because he needed **Dean**, he needed Dean back_ - he left, like a pilgrim fleeing prosecution he fled, from the memories that soaked these walls like gasoline soaked old, dry bones, unable to burn it, just as he had been unable to burn Dean's body.

And everywhere he looked in that house were Dean's bones, the places he had touched and Sam was afraid that if he touched them they would crumble and cease to be, wither and wilt and die, just as Dean had, in his arms, _in his **arms**_. So he never touched it, wanted to leave before he could watch it leave him, too.

Because if he couldn't get Dean back, there was always a bitch he had plans on killing.

_And I have lost your face_  
_It slips between my fingers now_  
_And all the world is gray_  
_As though you took the colors with you_  
_When you went and passed away_

And Bobby wanted to fight to keep Sam, the Sam that had been when Dean was alive, the Sam that could catch the good in a failing world, like finding the perfect spot for a puzzle piece, but he was gone, and Bobby could not fight for what had been replaced by something new.

And so Bobby had to cope by helping Sam with hunting, and only hunting, and never would Sam take a break, because this Sam did not have Dean to ask him to go to the bar for some drinks, and this Sam did not have Dean to tell him to get some sleep and finish the damn research in the morning, and this Sam was empty and busy and made asking him for recreational time seem like a sin. And Sam rarely called and rarely spoke to Bobby, because even if Bobby didn't know it, Sam had already lived through this and he could still remember the desperation that had taken the form of a splintered stake which had wound itself into Bobby's flesh, a mangled prayer that drank Bobby's blood as it had Sam's wretchedness. And even though that had all been an illusion of the Trickster, it felt as real as any dream sometimes feels, surreal and on the edge of one's mind.

And so Bobby thought Sam was lost with Dean, and Sam thought that everything was lost with Dean, and so it went on.

_I remember how the bedroom looked_  
_When you left to see your lord_  
_The sheets were a mess_  
_And your clothes were all wrecked_  
_In a pile by the door_

And when Sam did have to sleep, because for all the pain it had been caused, he still had a soul, unlike his brother, who had sold it on Sam's conscience, traded his own pain so that Sam may experience it later, he dreamed of Dean dying.

He relived it constantly, except sometimes, he could see the hounds, and sometimes he could see what Lilith truly was, underneath, but the worst, the worst, was watching Dean die, because he could also see what Dean was, and he knew.

Dean didn't deserve to die. But when he looked down at himself, covered in his brother's blood, he didn't see anything worth saving.

And he didn't know it, but it was the demon's blood making him relive the nightmares, and it was the demon's blood that filtered through his eyes until he saw the truth, the uglier truths, and all that he expected to see, and it woke him up in the middle of the night, hungry and aching and broken.

_And though my blood runs the same as it did before_  
_Only difference is now I barely feel it anymore_

And Sam was numb, and if Gabriel had seen, had seen that trying to teach Sam had only made the lesson so much worse because Sam fell prey to Ruby's manipulation with so much more ease, so quick to blur the lines of right and wrong, to leave behind the man of faith for the one who lost everything for nothing, he might have regretted watching the pure soul lapse into darkness.

_So I collected all our plans and crimes_  
_And set them all alight_  
_The only thing that bound me to this place_  
_You took with you when you died_  
_So goodbye, goodbye_

And when, one day, Ruby isn't quite quick enough to pull Sam away from the teetering edge of death and life, sin and virtue that he has begun to walk, when something dies in his arms but not before it has pushed it's claws into his belly and it's too late, he doesn't care, because if he drinks demon blood and ends up in Hell, at least he can see Dean again. And Ruby is angry and worried as only she can be, and he's laughing, but almost not hysterically, and she's telling him not to die, _dammit, Winchester! _And he doesn't care, and he shoves the demon blade into her stomach because even if she doesn't seem as evil as all the other demons, she's still evil, and at least he can stop her from hurting someone again, and he's crying softly, laughing, "_Goodbye, goodbye_," into her hair, again and again, because Ruby is dead and there is just another body in his arms, and he's sorry there are so many of them.


	3. Always Gold

Lyrics from "Always Gold" by Radical Face

* * *

_We were tight knit boys_  
_Brothers in more then name_  
_You would kill for me_  
_And knew that I'd do the same_  
_And it cut me sharp_  
_Hearing you'd gone away_

_But everything goes away_  
_Yeah everything goes away_

* * *

Sam lost something inside when Dean died. At first, Bobby thought it was the blood. The body, covered in claw marks.

At first he thought it was the screams.

Those memories had to have snagged on something in Sam, had to have gotten caught on the way down, and now they were in between who knew where and they were pulling away at him. Those were things no one would forget in a jiffy.

And certainly not forgive.

But Sam had lived through this before, or something like it. Something just as cruel, just as morbid.

Watched his fiancé burn above him in fierce innocence burned red. This was an old revenge, bubbling back up to the surface, he'd thought.

But as the days wore on, and Sam didn't speak, refused to burn Dean, never visited, Bobby began to understand.

Something got lost in Sam Winchester.

And Bobby realized something in the tight, sharp way you realize something subtle that snuck up behind you and pulled the rug out from under. It manifested as a small blank and sad observation, that quickly wasted away into a horrified comprehension that would not make itself un-known, that sprang up bright and black and tucked itself into his mind whenever he saw the boy in his peripheral vision.

_That's how John was._

And even when Sam was clothed in hate as thick as blood that rushed from open wounds, even if he couldn't see past the rage to moving on, he was trying to earn his own redemption, to gain forgiveness for failing his brother by washing it off in Lilith's blood.

But John had had two children who had needed him to let go of just a little of that hatred for some gruff care taking that at least resembled affection. Sam had nothing to keep him from turning the entirety of his focus on the single task of killing Lilith.

He'd lost something.

* * *

_But I'm going to be here until I'm nothing_  
_But bones in the ground_

_And I was there, when you grew restless_  
_Left in the dead of night_  
_And I was there, when three months later_  
_You were standing in the door all beat and tired_  
_And I stepped aside_

_Everything goes away_  
_Yeah everything goes away_  
_But I'm gonna be here until I'm nothing_  
_But bones in the ground_  
_So quiet down_

* * *

Dean remembered when Sammy was younger, and they were staying at a motel that had a lawn, and dad was out, they'd play ball.

Nothing specific, just catch, usually, or some variation thereupon, and sometimes it wasn't even with a ball.

If it was a rock, you had to be extra careful, and he was glad to say Sammy never got injured. If it was a rock, it could at least count as training in some obscure way. Even if there had been no way to justify it as a meaningful activity, Dean would have done it.

Because Sammy loved it.

One day, they were playing - Dean had found some wood and he'd carved it up with one of the knives into the semblance of something round without splinters - when a ball bounced across the street.

Sammy picked it up and looked across.

A little group of rug rats about Sammy's age stared back.

Dean was about to say no, but it was too late. Via the telepathic link of all tiny children, Sam turned on his heel with a pleading look before Dean had actually managed to get out the single syllable word. They shared a short look. Sam didn't know about all the monsters and hunters yet, but he knew that he had to ask.

Dean hoped that they didn't all turn out to be demons or something. He took a sharp breathe before he gave a short, forced smile, and said, "Okay, Sammy."

It was fun. More fun that Dean would have liked to admit, but it was. Sam, Sam thrived. He gushed with all the other small children and they played catch and hide and seek (once, because even though Dean never said anything, he nearly had a heart attack when he couldn't find Sam, and after that Sam shared another one of the mind conversations with the leader of the group, a small brunette with pigtails called Sarah, who proceeded to declare it time for catch.) and Sarah's mother brought out lemonaid and wafers.

When it was done, they retreated back to the motel, waving at Sarah as she returned inside with her mother for dinner and as the other children walked with their parents or were picked up.

Sam only stopped talking about it when Dad got back.

And then Dad said they had to go, had to leave _now_, come on, get packed, we're going. Sam was too young, then, too young to have argued, to have pleaded, thankfully, but Dean saw that short moment of pause, where Sam didn't want to accept it. But it was there, the look in a child's face that should never be seen. Where they would give for anything in the world to not have heard what they just did.

They piled into the car and drove away in silence except for the music, but no one was really listening to it. Dean saw Sam looking into his lap so that he wouldn't see Sarah's house disappear behind them, lit up from inside in the cool evening.

They drove for miles before they came to somewhere John decided was acceptably far enough, and they unpacked quietly and ate quietly and he left to go check out the bar down the road.

Sam didn't say anything until they were in bed and it was dark and quiet, and apparently safe enough to cry silently. Or what passed for silently when your older brother has been training to be a hunter. And he knows.

And Dean had never regretted anything more then when he quietly called, "Sammy?"

And it paused just long enough for Sam to snuffle and whisper heartbrokenly, "Why can't we be normal, Dean?"

Because he would not have an answer for a long time, yet.

And when Sam had known the truth and got into his sporadic fights with Dad and left in the middle of the night and Dean begged him to stay but he wouldn't, couldn't, Dean would remember that night.

He'd think about it every day until Sam finally came back, each absence having been gone longer than the last time, because the truth was, that had been the first time.

The first time Sam asked that question and so the first time he'd been unable to answer of many.

* * *

_We were opposites at birth_  
_I was steady as a hammer_  
_No one worried 'cause they knew just where I'd be_  
_And they said you were the crooked kind_  
_And that you'd never have no worth_  
_But you were always gold to me_

* * *

When Sam left for good, he cut his ties to the Winchester family and company the same night, because every time before he'd waited, and he had to do it while he was still angry or he wouldn't be able to do it at all.

And something inside always hurt because he missed Dean and he wanted Dean to be there with him and it wasn't fair.

It wasn't fair that Dean wouldn't have any opportunities because _"Dad said"_.

And Dean didn't deserve the life he had been given and Sam wished desperately that he'd start over, and not wear the assumptions people would have of him, because no one truly saw Dean as Dean was, and that was the kind of person he needed.

Strangers didn't know Dean. The police had no idea who Dean was. Dad never really took the time to know them as they knew each other. Even Bobby didn't get to see the real Dean.

Sam knew he was almost always seeing a mask Dean wore, and he knew Dean had slipped into the role of big brother without thought, and it was not something he considered a burden, but he was made up of what Sam needed and what Dad wanted at any given point and he never thought about himself and he'd never really been given the chance to be himself, and _it wasn't fair_.

But if anything, Sam knew better than anyone that Dean was more than they would ever know or have the chance to know in their lifetime.

And he deserved so much more than what he thought.

* * *

_And back when we were kids_  
_We swore we knew the future_  
_And our words would take us half way 'round the world_  
_But I never left this town_  
_And you never saw New York_  
_And we ain't ever cross the sea_

_But I am fine with where I am now_  
_This home is home, and all that I need_  
_But for you, this place is shame_  
_But you can blame me when there's no one left to blame_

_oh I don't mind_

* * *

Dean remembered back when Sam had been more complacent and less reserved about living a hunter's life, when they would sneak Dad's journal out and a map they'd stolen from some gas station, and try to mark all the places on the map where he'd been - where they'd been. They'd spend forever talking about where they wanted to go, and now.

Now all Sam wanted was_ just_ to go. To be _gone_.

Anywhere. Anywhere that wasn't hunting.

And Dean knew their life was shitty, but it still hurt. It took him a long time to reconcile that. And even longer still to realize it was his fault for not doing better.

He should have done better.

He was okay now. He understood. And it was okay.

The only one to blame was himself.

* * *

_All my life_

_I've never known where you've been_  
_There were holes in you_  
_The kind that I could not mend_

_And I heard you say_  
_Right when you left that day_  
_Does everything go away?_  
_Yeah, everything goes away._

* * *

And by the time Sam learned everything, it was too late to fix any of it.

To mend anything.

Dean had carried too much and left it all behind for family, and he had no interest in digging it back up or talking.

And now Sam was like that, he didn't need to speak about it because he only needed to do one thing.

He needed to kill Lilith.

He laughed, for the first time in two months, when Bobby called him - one of the last calls - again, to tell him killing Lilith wouldn't fix anything. Wouldn't make it better.

"You won't get any peace outta this, boy." Bobby said in that tough yet anxious way only he could truly master.

Sam laughed then, though it was a poor mimicry of laughter, because he didn't try emulating joy, only the sound it should leave behind, and even then, it was ugly.

"I was never going to have peace." Sam whispered and hung up.

And maybe he understood that then as best as he could, but as worst he could, too.

Because the demon blood had started weaving into his dreams and making them nightmares, and by then, he thought they would never end.

* * *

_But I'm going to be here 'til forever_  
_So just call when you're around._

* * *

Dean didn't know how to say it, and he likely wouldn't, but he would always be there.

Always.

He hadn't realized it until he'd seen his brother's face again after decades in Hell.

He hadn't realized it until there was an exhale from Sammy and a hug, two big arms wrapping around him, strong as iron, strong as gold.

Always.

Always gold.


End file.
